There’s a phrase we throw around far too easily in tech and leadership circles: best practice. It sounds reassuring—like we’ve done the work, studied the options, and landed on something definitive. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: most of the time, “best practice” is just shorthand for “we stopped thinking.”
We treat “best” like a stamp of permanence. Something settled. Something proven. But in complex systems—like software development, organizational design, and team dynamics—there are no final answers. Only evolving ones.
When ‘Best’ Is Just Inertia
The problem with the term best practice is not always the practice itself—it’s the perspective the phrase invites. Best is steeped in finality. It implies that nothing better exists, or ever will. That the thinking is over. And while we may not mean it that way, language shapes thought. When we call something “best,” we stop asking “is it still working?”
I’ve seen this play out over and over:
Velocity becomes the goal, not delivery.
Teams are forced into Scrum ceremonies because "that’s what agile teams do."
Organizations copy-paste the Spotify model without Spotify’s context or culture.
OKRs get rolled out like a magic trick—then ignored when they don’t instantly align everyone.
One especially sticky example is the annual performance review. It was considered a best practice for decades. Not because it was great—but because it was standardized. At least you got feedback once a year. But it often came too late, skewed by recency bias, and lacked the context needed for real improvement. When we replaced them with regular 1:1s and monthly engagement surveys, people got more meaningful feedback, and leadership got better insight. Clarity, retention, and satisfaction all went up. What changed? Not just the practice—but the frequency, the mindset, and the system it lived in.
There’s a Better Word: Leading
That’s why I favor a different term: leading practice.
Leading practices are what we believe to be working best right now, given our current context, constraints, and goals. But the language of leading suggests the door is still open. Leading practices invite challenge. They imply something else could overtake them. They evolve.
It’s a small linguistic shift with a huge impact:
“Best” says copy me.
“Leading” says think with me.
And that difference is the line between dogma and learning.
Context Always Wins
From a Cynefin perspective, there is a domain where best practices can be real: the Clear domain. In highly predictable, well-understood systems, there may be one correct or optimized way to complete a task. Think factory work, basic accounting, or a safety protocol. In those cases, best practice isn’t just marketing—it’s engineering.
And that’s exactly where the term comes from. The roots of “best practice” lie in early scientific management from the 1890s to the 1920s—motion studies, optimization, industrial labor. In that world, repeatability was the measure of success. But in knowledge work? In systems shaped by humans, uncertainty, discovery, and change? That world doesn’t hold.
Most of what we do now lives in the Complicated or Complex domains. The path forward isn’t “the one true way”—it’s experimentation, feedback, and learning.
Build a Culture of Leading Practices
If we want to do better, we need to think differently about how we choose, talk about, and evolve our practices.
Favor principles over prescriptions. Teach people how to think, not just what to do.
Encourage intentionality. Ask why something worked, not just what it was.
Expect to revisit. Build systems that can learn and adjust.
Celebrate context. What works for one team may not work for another—and that’s fine.
Let’s stop trying to standardize ourselves into stagnation. Let’s lead instead.
Further Reading
Related Behaviors
Validate Before, During, and After
Practices should be assessed continuously, not assumed effective.Be Meticulous About Composition
Good practices are constructed intentionally, not inherited blindly.Work Together
Collaboration fosters adaptation—essential for evolving practices.